


i shall say good night till it be morrow

by invertedpyramids



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Gen, minor chuulip, minor hyewon, minor yvesoul, post-distance modulus, the Power of friendship yes yes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29466495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invertedpyramids/pseuds/invertedpyramids
Summary: “What will you do when we’re all gone?”“Remember. Tell our stories. For as long I can.”(Hyejoo, at the end of an adventure.)
Relationships: Im Yeojin & Son Hyejoo | Olivia Hye
Comments: 18
Kudos: 58
Collections: backup dancers ficmix exchange





	i shall say good night till it be morrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dimsum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimsum/gifts).
  * Inspired by [distance modulus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24734968) by [fenying](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenying/pseuds/fenying). 
  * Inspired by [past a new time and space (it’s just us two)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29378322) by [luxeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luxeme/pseuds/luxeme). 



> for hui, who deserves the nobel prize for fiction for writing the game-changing distance modulus. thank you for writing the space opera fic that we all never knew we needed. sorry for this fic being all over the place!
> 
> title taken from a line in romeo & juliet: “Parting is such sweet sorrow/That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
> 
> this is set after distance modulus and luxeme's remix and makes references to both

It isn’t dramatic. Not like in the movies. There’s no violin music in the background, the setting sun high in the sky as they all clasp hands before heading off to their own separate ships, never to meet again.

No, it’s more like this:

Vivi and Yeojin leave first. They’re all lying on Jungeun and Jiwoo’s couch, stacked up on each other, stomachs bloated from how well Jiwoo feeds them. Vivi stands and pats her now-signature grey tracksuit down.

“Well,” says Vivi, and there’s a note of finality in it that makes all of them look up. “We better get going then. Restoring the universe and all that.” She smiles faintly at them. “Better go before someone else decides that they want to destroy the universe as well.”

“Yeah.” Sooyoung is the first one to break the taut silence. She clasps Vivi’s hand and tugs Yeojin into a bear hug, and they all say their goodbyes in turn. 

“Thank you for the hospitality, Jungeun. And the wonderful meal, Jiwoo. It was lovely meeting you.” 

Vivi raises a hand in farewell. Yeojin cracks open the door. The last rays of sunlight filter in through the opening, and they all watch as the both of them dissolve into the dusk.

They put on a movie. Once the credits roll, Heejin yawns and stretches. 

“Think we better go too,” she says, with a glance at a sleeping - meditating? - Hyunjin. “We’re meeting our parts dealer for some really rare mineral tomorrow. Limited time offer. Can’t be missed.” 

She kicks Hyunjin’s shin. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Drive safe,” says Jinsol. She’s snuggled into Sooyoung’s side, almost sinking into the cavernous depths of the ancient sofa. “Don’t speed. And don’t warp where you might get caught.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Don’t worry blondie, I've been doing this far longer than you have.”

Jinsol sticks her tongue out at her.

Jungeun holds the door open for them. “The nearest skiff is at the end of the dirt road. You can probably rent one to get you to the nearest interplanetary station.”

“Cheers.” Hyunjin bumps Jungeun’s shoulder on her way out. “We’ll be going then.”

“See you never,” Heejin quips.

The door swings shut. It’s just the few of them left now.

“You guys can stay, if you want,” Jiwoo offers. “We have some spare rooms, and I’m sure Jungeunie will be happy to make up some beds.” She smiles sweetly at Jungeun’s scowl. “Right, honey?”

Jungeun mumbles something reluctant but stomps off when Jiwoo doesn’t let up.

Sooyoung snorts. “Someone slap me if I ever get that whipped.”

“Hmm?” says Jinsol. “What was that, dear?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Jiwoo stifles a laugh.

“Room’s ready,” mutters Jungeun a while later, leaning on the doorway to the living room. She narrows her eyes at Sooyoung and Jinsol. “ _Don’t_ break anything. I swear to god. I will end you.”

Sooyoung merely laughs. Jinsol, to her credit, looks a little more alarmed.

They go to bed in a chorus of sleepy murmurs, and Jinsol shares a whispered joke with Jiwoo as Sooyoung shoves her down the corridor and to the back of the house where all the guest rooms are.

The next morning, the both of them leave with a beautifully written note and a bouquet of flowers, and a promise to return for more adventures.

Jungeun flips the cards over and turns to Hyejoo at the breakfast table, the last member of their ragtag group, almost dwarfed by her giant backpack in the chair next to her, and asks, “Where to?”

Hyejoo shrugs.

They’ve spent many moments together in the past two years, Hyejoo thinks, hanging out in cockpits and skulking along the sides of Sooyoung’s love-shrine-ship. Had conversations in the replica lounge, on the pull-out bed that Sooyoung pleaded with Hyejoo to rescue from the burning hulk that was her girlfriend’s first ship.

They pause at the threshold of Jungeun’s home. The first of three suns is only just rising, dousing the world in a beautiful, pale white glow. The fields of tulips running along the dirt path sway and bend in the wind, an endless sea of colour. The one earth thing that’s managed to take root all over the universe.

Perhaps this is why Jungeun and Jiwoo have taken up here. A pale imitation, but home, nonetheless.

Jungeun reaches out a hand. They grip each other’s wrists, like how they do in Locria.

“This isn’t the end,” says Jungeun, a fierce determination in her voice. “We’ll see each other again. All of us.”

“Yeah.” Hyejoo lets a rare grin slip. “It’s not.” And then she turns.

Dwarfed by the eight-feet tall tulips, she walks, with nothing more than her life’s possessions on her back and a vague destination in her mind.

And they do meet, of course. Again and again and again. It isn’t the movies after all. 

She spends her next years wandering. First to Berceuse, where she finds herself in deep within the underbelly of the city, modifying body parts for a price. It’s nothing she hasn’t done before; and it’s not as complicated as the body modifications that Sooyoung had her do.

But even deep under the planet’s crust, she hears whispers of her friends. Vivi and Yeojin, bringing peace to planets as far as the Centaurus V system. They’ve even managed to broker peace between the Chaberese and the Dalenians in the five years since they’ve stabilised BBC and ended Jaden’s galaxy-wide threat.

Sooyoung sends her radio signal messages from across deep space. Mostly short updates, but sometimes she rambles. She and Jinsol have decided to travel again. No longer as bounty hunters - or conveyors of delicate packages, as Sooyoung prefers - but as tourists.

 _There’s so many things I’d like to see with her. Before my time is up._

Hyejoo sends a short message back, recommending the best delicacies in the inner Milky Way.

Heejin and Hyunjin come by once, after a business accident takes Heejin’s right arm off. They sit in the workshop with Hyejoo, Hyunjin pacing the room as Heejin tries not to grunt too loudly.

“You’ve gotten better at this,” Heejin says, once Hyejoo seals it back up. She flexes her now golden fingers. The synthetic flesh crackles a little. “Needs a little oil,” she jokes, “but it’s perfect.”

Hyejoo takes them out for some protein pudding, and by the next day, they’re gone.

She doesn’t hear from Jungeun.

When she finally tires of stitching shattered sinews and building new flesh, Hyejoo packs everything into that same backpack and takes off. She repairs ships in exchange for passage, and finds herself in places she’s never thought she’d visit.

The edge of the Ambitus Belt, sharing a drink with hitchhiking Lydians, watching space debris fall like shooting stars at their feet. She makes her way to Virgo Stellaris with a pack of illegally smuggled sea serpents, and crawls through the tunnel running right through the Ionian core.

She surfs city-high waves on Insen, swims in the liquid underwater on Europa, and fights through the dense tropical foliage on Adonai Malakh.

She runs into Sooyoung and Jinsol once on Neapo, saving them from a kid wiping all the credits off their bank account.

“You look different,” Sooyoung says, grinning, and Hyejoo takes stock of the years. Eight. They’ve kept in contact through radio waves, but it’s different like this. Meeting them in person.

They look different too. While Jinsol is as young as ever, there are lines on Sooyoung’s face now. Her hourglass runs faster than theirs - a blink of an eye for Hyejoo passes as decades for Sooyoung. And if she knows anything about Earthlings, she’ll start feeling her age soon enough.

Jinsol pats her arm. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, just… here and there.”

“Thank god you appeared when you did,” says Sooyoung. “We just came from Tonos, nearly spent all our money there too. We’d have been stranded here without a way to get back if it weren’t for you.”

Jinsol smiles warmly at her. “We’re planning to go back to Phrygia now. Want to come with us?”

She could, of course. She doesn’t have anything else to do. But she sees the way Jinsol’s hands tighten around Sooyoung like sand running through her fingers, and shakes her head. 

“Nah. You guys have fun.”

Sooyoung and Jinsol frown. But a raging night out is enough for them to forget this entire exchange. Hyejoo stays with them for another week before she decides it's time to leave.

She sees Vivi and Yeojin’s faces on the intergalactic news on her way out, people crowding around the holograph to listen in on the first Galactic Parliamentary Session. Yeojin opens the sitting and Vivi takes the chair.

She hears a whisper of Heejin and Hyunjin’s new business venture around corners, and receives a single message from Jungeun from her brief stopover in Pelog.

With her threadbare backpack, Hyejoo climbs aboard a ship for Tonos.

In her intervening years, Hyejoo keeps up with all of them, as closely as she can.

Vivi spends the rest of her life doing what she was born to do - diplomacy. But instead of governing the prosperous inner planet of Mixolydia, she travels the galaxy, helping Miracle Girl Yeojin bring peace to as many planets as they can before they can’t anymore. Her fame grows. In some parts of the galaxy, people call her the Mother. Stately, wise, the bringer of peace.

Sometimes, she and Sooyoung and Jinsol meet at diplomatic functions, but from what Sooyoung tells her, they can’t muster more than a quick back-and-forth before something or the other swallows up Vivi’s attention. Hyejoo doesn’t meet her again.

Yeojin, the Saviour, goes down in legend. The girl who defeated BBC. The girl who protected the universe. And even when Vivi passes, Yeojin, the practically-immortal Sryntonian, will carry on her legacy for as long as she can. 

Heejin and Hyunjin continue their lives as mercenaries. Somehow, in between their thieving and Heejin’s inventions, they manage to scrounge up enough to start some kind of business. She’s fuzzy on the details, but each time they visit, they always bring with them some kind of trinkets, things from the outer reaches of the galaxy, things that she’s only ever heard about in cantina stories and whispered rumours. Things even more legendary than the Modal key. They come by once a year at first, and then once every decade, and eventually, they stop coming at all.

Sooyoung and Jinsol farm. Phrygia isn’t really the best place to grow much of anything, really, but somehow they make it work. They grow Phrygian wheat, cloudspotter flowers, little sweet treats that the kids always nick from under their ancient electric fence, and they bring them all over every few years when it’s time to harvest - then overstay their welcome until Hyejoo has to kick them out several months later. 

She watches the laugh lines on their faces deepen, and the age wearing on Sooyoung faster than on Jinsol, and when she finally leaves her home, so many years later, for Sooyoung’s funeral, she retells all their stories as though they only happened yesterday.

Jungeun, of all people, stays the same. Kim Jungeun. Bounty hunter. A quick shot, deadly aim. Spends all her free time on Aeolia with Jiwoo and that rainbow field of giant tulips. Jungeun comes by every few months with special earth food from Jiwoo - that she later learns is called _kimchi_ \- that lies in her refrigerator for months, until she finally opens it and savours each piece like a delicacy.

When Hyejoo lands in Tonos, the sun is blinding. Heat waves wrinkle the horizon, and she’s forced to give up her padded clothes for some thin linen to swaddle around herself. Tonos is a sandy outpost at the absolute end of the galaxy, the lighthouse beckoning to ships stranded beyond the reaches of the known universe. All life revolves around its continent-spanning radio tower, which sends a steady stream of signals all the way into interstellar space.

She treks through the sand alone. Days, nights, until she sees her first sign of civilisation. Yellow flickering lights, strung up around an oasis, mudflat homes stacked so densely that Hyejoo can’t see beyond it.

She heads straight for the house with a blue roof; it opens with the key around her neck, just like the Chaberese at the interplanetary station told her it would. And finally, she sets her backpack down.

She doesn’t know it yet, but this is where she will live and die, eking out the rest of her life in simple pleasure, nobody knowing that one of the galaxy’s Great Heroes lives right here, at their doorstep.

But for now, she hears a knock on her door, barely perceptible in the echoing hollow of the mudflat.

Hyejoo opens the door, and stares at the blinding silhouette of a girl with mint green hair.

“Hey, you just moved in, didn’t you?” she asks, with a shy smile. “I thought I’d come over to say hi. Bring some food. It’s tough for new people to survive in the desert.”

And as Hyejoo finds herself cracking a rare smile, she feels, for the first time in a long while, her wandering heart come to rest.

“You know, I never thought it’d be this beautiful here.” 

“Neither did I.”

They sit at the edge of the sand dune, Hyejoo’s walking stick beside her, Yeojin swinging her legs as though she was seventeen again.

“I was surprised to hear that you settled down on Tonos. It was just a whole bunch of nothing then, wasn’t it? But now…” She looks at the skyscraping city in the distance. “It’s a port now. Onward to the next galaxy. The next adventure. You ever thought of going further?”

Hyejoo lifts a corner of her lips. It takes more from her than she expects. “Never.” She turns to Yeojin, looks at the faint lines, age slowly but surely creeping up on her friend after a millennium. “I’ve lived a life far enough from the people who mattered, I think.”

She thinks of Sooyoung, of Jinsol, of Vivi, and of Jungeun and Jiwoo.

“Do you regret it?”

There’s a plot of land somewhere here where she buried Chaewon centuries ago. It’s all dust now, she thinks. All of them are. All of them will be. 

She raises her shaking hand and interlaces her fingers with Yeojin’s. One still smooth and strong, the other withered and grey.

She asks instead: “What will you do when we’re all gone?”

Yeojin clasps her hand in hers. Presses a gentle kiss to her shrivelled knuckles.

“Remember,” she says, her voice sure and strong. “Tell our stories. For as long I can.”


End file.
